


Ladder

by suecsit



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Asphyxiation, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Male Slash, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-27
Updated: 2013-04-27
Packaged: 2017-12-09 16:13:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/776193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suecsit/pseuds/suecsit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Will finds out the truth, he tries to get out of a psychiatric office before it's too late.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ladder

**Author's Note:**

> This story mixes images of the tv series Hannibal with the climactic opening scene of Red Dragon (Basically, I am scared to death of that ladder in Lecter's office).

There was only one way out. 

The ladder.

When he saw the reference to the wound man in the surgery book, he looked left and right to see if Lecter had built one of those magical trap doors that would send laundry or secret boxes down to the ground floor. There was none. There was only the ladder connecting the library shelves down to the main floor of the psychiatrist’s office. Will was trapped.

Will casually, he hoped, placed the book back on the shelf. He realized, too late, he hadn’t been listening to the last question the doctor had asked.

“What?” His face bright red, he avoided eye contact but wished he knew how to put on masks like Hannibal. He didn’t.

“I asked how you were sleeping…” Lecter’s face curled into a slight smile as he saw the red flush over Will’s neck. He glanced at the shelf where Will had returned the book. “Interested in surgery these days? Since the Ripper?” He moved toward the ladder as if to climb it.

“Yeah, I just need to look something up,” Will muttered. His hands ran nervously through his brown hair and refused to remain still. There was no way out. He had to climb down. He walked toward the ladder.

One step at a time. Just one step at a time. He knew it was time to create that thing that had always eluded him since childhood: a poker face. He didn’t have one, but fight or flight makes poker players of us all, he supposed.

As he gingerly sought each rung down the ladder, Will’s hands shook so hard that one of them slipped off the wood and caused him to momentarily hang loosely from one limb. He gathered his energy to replace the hand and hurried clumsily down the final steps. Lecter reached for him at the bottom and steadied his landing by taking his upper arm in hand.

“Thanks,” he muttered. Eyes down on the ground, he looked for the coffee cup he had brought in. If he could find a trash can near the door….It was on the desk. His hand reached out and closed on it, grateful for the solid prop upon which to bestow his attention. He stood with his back to Lecter, facing the doctor’s desk. 

“You haven’t told me whether you’ll need an appointment next week, Will,” said Lecter, moving closer to the profiler as he gulped too-cold sips of stale coffee from his paper cup and kept his eyes averted.

“Not sure yet. My schedule with Jack is getting a bit. . . .out of control.” He couldn’t help the high-pitched sound that seemed to leak over the word control as he attempted to keep his poker face in place. Why couldn’t he be any good at this?

Hannibal made a tsk-tsk noise in response. Turning around, Will met his eyes for a brief second before he crushed the empty cup in his hand and began to twist it in pieces. “Will, are you quite all right? You’re shaking.”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. It’s like you said. No sleep.”

“The stag?”

Why he had chosen to tell Lecter about the stag finally, he didn’t know. But it seemed odd that the stag was the only hallucination, the only vision he hadn’t described in therapy. Today of all days, the stag had been the topic of conversation before Will had gotten antsy, pulled away, and climbed the ladder to rifle through the books on the shelf. Those books had always been a convenient excuse for escaping the intimate looks and lack of personal space that often plagued his encounters with Lecter.   
Now he wished he had just stayed seated. Curiosity killed…and all that.

“I just…I need to make a phone call. I left my cell at home.” Will’s voice rose at the end of the statement, like a question. “I’ll be back, I just…”

“Of course. Take your time.”

Will got to the door and turned the knob. A hand joined his. How Lecter appeared that quickly behind him he would never know. 

“You can use my office line, of course,” Lecter breathed on the back of his neck. “No need to run out.”

The hysterical laughter Will wanted to choke down burst out of him in gasping breaths. “No, I guess there’s no need for that.”

“Will—“

“You know, most people wouldn’t have kept that book around.”

“Will—“ And then the flood broke.

“Most people, at least SANE people, or intelligent psychopaths, as I USED to call them, if they didn’t want to get caught, would have put that book away.” Perhaps Will was suicidal after all. He couldn’t hold the truth in, though. It had to come out or it would drown him, like breathing in liquid.

Lecter held his hand firmly, not too threateningly, but tight enough to signal that the door was no longer an option. “You clearly are losing a great deal of sleep.” He led him back to the armchair in the middle of the room. “Tell me what has you so rattled. I must insist you explain before you leave me.” He sat down across from his patient.

“I—you—it was a game..”  
“I’m not sure I follow.” His mouth and eyes said differently. Lecter moved his own chair closer to Will’s. His eyes glittered.

“You used me. Lied to me. Took a key to my house…”

"Hmmm." The doctor paused and contemplated his patient for a moment. Will's hands remained clenched on the arms of the chair; he was poised for flight. Lecter leaned in. “I didn’t take anything you didn’t willingly give, William.”

“Oh God—“

“Spare me the melodramatics. You and I are alone. We both know that you had the answer. Serial killers are your life’s work, your life’s blood. You used me as much as I used you."

“I didn’t want this. Stop pretending you know what’s inside my head.” Will hissed, and wiped his face furiously, as a tear escaped his eye. He stood up but felt dizzy. “I want out. If you stop me, I’ll—“

Lecter grabbed him as he stood up too quickly. When did the man become so much taller? Will thought hysterically. Surely there were only one or two inches of height difference between them. Now he was an ant, barely anything but an insect in Lecter’s grip. “I mean it—“ Will pushed as hard as he could at the chest in front of him. He suddenly felt like a petulant child rather than a man trying to save his own life.

“What is it the Americans say, Will? Serial killers make you…’hot’?” 

“Go to hell.” Will finally pushed him off, only because Lecter let him. He was like a toy Lecter was batting around the room. The doctor chuckled, all darkness and malice.   
He managed five steps again and found himself yanked back inside the arms of the killer. Lecter pulled him away from the exit and toward the very ladder he had climbed down just moments before. This time Lecter had him around the throat and his breath, despite the struggle, came evenly into Will’s ear. Will whimpered and then felt the horror of exposing such vulnerability. But the world was getting fuzzy, starry, black and warm, as the hands tightened near his wind pipe.

“I can make it all stop,” Lecter whispered. If I squeeze just a little harder in this direction,” he paused to show Will what he meant, “the nightmares will stop, Will. The stag will go away. Let me do this for you.”

As soon as his hands loosened their grip, Will started to move away again, only to feel the cold presence of a blade against his side and then slicing inside, all red, all blinding—the pain screamed at him, clawed its way up his chest. And then the feeling of wet, and penetration, and loss of vision. Lecter had grabbed a stiletto knife when Will had moved toward the door. That knife was probably lodged in a kidney now.

He fought the pain and tried to reach for his gun. The gun tumbled to the floor from his trembling fingers. It hit the bottom rung and bounced off.

“This will all end, I promise,” the doctor whispered in his ear lovingly. “Like slipping into a warm bath. So gentle. Not like the Wound Man, Will. You are something that I—“ the knife cut upward into a hook inside his body, and Will gasped.

“Something that I love.”

The loss of blood left Will disoriented. The ladder caught the corner of his eye. Not knowing what he was saying or thinking, the words he hoped would never escape his lips threatened to spill out. “I—loved you, too,” he whispered, losing the poker face he had tried so hard to wear, his eyes now openly pleading. “Please let me go.”

Lecter cradled his body as it came heavily down to the carpet. His hands stroked Will’s face and neck, and then with one swift stroke removed the blade from his abdomen. He held it up like a trophy. 

“I can’t let you go. That wasn’t ever part of the plan, Will.” 

As Will’s body threatened to sink into unconsciousness, his fingers groped toward the base rung of the ladder. If he could just topple it by pushing it slightly backward…  
The ladder slipped off its perch and began to fall toward the floor. 

Lecter looked up just in time to remove his hands from Will and catch it from crashing down. At that moment, Will grabbed for his gun, and turned and fired. He shot only twice.

Lecter’s face as the bullets hit him was one of surprise and pride. His body fell back over the ladder, and but he never took his eyes off Will, who crawled in his own blood away from his attacker and toward the phone in the middle of the room.

He left blood on the buttons as he pulled himself up to a kneeling position and dialed 911. Then he fell over, and everything went black.


End file.
